Working as a composer I use foobar's tagging abilities to document the progress in my compositions or to update a to-do list for further jobs. In order to see the creation date of my files I notice it in the comment field but it would be more pleasant if it would exist a syntax like %file creation date% to read this automatically with the benefit that I could sort by this field.Robertina.

i use "$cut(%last_modified%,10)" to sort my files after the day, lastmodified and creation date should be mostly the same, at least its here (the cut,10 strips the last letters from the string, which is the time... the default format is as far as i can see it: yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm

e: dont know if this works in columns/playlists, in foo_facets it works almost perfect for me

i use "$cut(%last_modified%,10)" to sort my files after the day, lastmodified and creation date should be mostly the same, at least its here

@ ktr,@ ojdo,

thank you for your replies.

The problem is that for me the file creation date is more important than the date of last modification (%last_modified%) and both they are not identical as described above.

foobar2000 is capable of monitoring the media library even when it is not running and apparently communicates intensively with the file system. So I hope some day there will be a syntax delivering the file creation date as well, but I am not a programmer.

Using foobar2000 since 2007 I have seen a lot of third party components whose development has been abandoned or which have been banned for some good reasons. So I am afraid of relying to much on them or on the wrong components and would rather see an implementation in foobar itself if the developers efforts for this are not too high. In addition this could satisfy those users who don't want accept an update of their file modifaction date on tagging action (a discussion I really don't want to restart here and not my point of view).

Therefore I would like to renew my request here, it would be wonderful if foobar could provide file creation date too and I hope this represents not only a single user opinion.

Hmmm... Last time I've read this thread I thought it is bit useless to have such field/variable. But today my friend came to me and I wanted to show him last additions to my collection. It was really hard because I couldn't sort files by %creation_time%, %creation_date% or however you name it. I had to open several order receipts/invoices from webshops and simply guess in case of ripped audio CDs and it took so many time... Someone can said that I could check it in Explorer but files are organised in many folders - mainly by releases and by artists and additionally/occasionally by styles and labels.

Add me to the list of those who are waiting for %creation_time% / %creation_date% variable. Ability of creation such coulmn and sorting playlist by date of file creation would be realy useful. Especially when you take to an account the fact that I love to update my tags with more detailed informations each time I play my music and my tagging scheme is still evolving and new "standard fields" are still coming and thus older often are changing their purpose a bit. Because of that I can't even approximate file creation date by file modification date... I think there are many other music lovers who are in similar situation.

From user's point of view it is much more convenient to use file system as source for this information, rather than making another massive update of whole music library. Additionally using file system information allows me to sort files that doesn't support tagging like video files or many game music files, or files that shouldn't be modified for some reasons.

i totally agree. i can totally understand people not wanting to update file tags but seeing as this thread was started 4 odd years ago with no official response i thought i might post an idea of a workaround.

Ack. Add me to the list of people affected by the lack of this variable. I think I'm going to have to resort to using Windows Explorer's search parameters to dig up the selection of files created within the time period I want and plop them from there into my playlist. I rarely use this Windows featureset, but it should be fairly simple. If this ends up being a non-trivial task, I'll try to remember to find time to post a follow-up with a how-to.

Do note that no list of potential workarounds should negate the fact that the lack of existence of such a variable (particularly considering that %last_modified% /does/ exist) is a nuisance for some of us.

Ack. Add me to the list of people affected by the lack of this variable. I think I'm going to have to resort to using Windows Explorer's search parameters to dig up the selection of files created within the time period I want and plop them from there into my playlist. I rarely use this Windows featureset, but it should be fairly simple. If this ends up being a non-trivial task, I'll try to remember to find time to post a follow-up with a how-to.

Do note that no list of potential workarounds should negate the fact that the lack of existence of such a variable (particularly considering that %last_modified% /does/ exist) is a nuisance for some of us.

Win8's contextual Explorer 'ribbon' menus make things easier than in previous versions but still only expose the last modified date. There are always multiple ways to skin a cat, but I suggest this route for Win8 users: enter the text "datecreated:" into the search box of Explorer. From there forward, the OS UI wizardry will kick in and make the rest of the process obvious.

Just as an example (without even explaining what my problem/use case was), my final query text ended up being "datecreated:‎12/‎18/‎2012 .. ‎12/‎31/‎2012 kind:=folder" (along with a selection within the Search ribbon to limit my search to the current folder without recursing into the subfolders beneath). In my case, the availability of a creation date search facility allowed me to find 3857 music files versus the 3226 files found using my previous foobar2k-supported solution. Just some food for thought / anecdotal support towards the addition of this variable, Pete. :]

Wouldn't an autoplaylist with a query like this: "%added% DURING LAST 2 WEEKS SORT BY %added%, %album%, %disc%, %track%" do the same? If you create a file into a folder the media library is watching, this will also be the date you 'added' it. (only if you at least open Foobar2000 to update the library or have it running while you create it.)

The problem is that for example I use foobar from version 0.8.3 (I don't remember when it even was), but foo_playcount from about half of year and Media Library since maybe 2 months... And even if I would do this since the very beginning - still information from filesystem would be more accurate.

Anyway, as a workaround I created my own DATE_ADDED field and.... I tagged less than 200 last additions to my library. I just opened several order receipts... and failed at first with just bunch of files instead of albums/singles/compilations. Those can be find by album name and single search results in tagging at least 2, but often 4-6 files at once. Searching for 40 files and adding the same date to them 40 times is bit boring... and if I recall that there were several orders with bunch of 60-80 tracks instead of releases... "Date created" from filesystem is a must. I tried to gather some info using file modification date and... DAMN... nearly all files on HDD were modified within one hour... Yes, I requested RG scan on all my files at 31-03-2013 and applied results to all files by single click... Hahahah... In this case suppressing change of file modification date would be an option (as suggested/requested by many users), but I don't like the idea of breaking filesystem rules/properties. When my PC was far slower I disabled changing/updating of last access and modification date on all HDDs using Windows registry entries but this is ancient history now. So we still wait for "%creation_date%" "added nicely", and in the meantime I will hardly try to open all my receipts... and read them... and write those dates

There is one problem. Since my fist Beatport purchase my music collection moved several times: 250GB HDD -> 500 GB HDD -> 2TB HDD -> 3 TB HDD (don't worry, that was only "cosmetic change" and "Music" is not the only partition on 3 TB HDD). The problem is that during all these operations creation date has changed. Modification date remain unchanged (since last tagging operation so it was still imprecise) - but only till 31-03-2013 when I performed massive RG scanning and updating. So today dates taken from filesystem are mostly useless to me... Only files from maybe last year have "proper" creation dates. But it is also bit imprecise if I want to use those dates as "Added to collection date" - as FLACs could be produced even 2 weeks after they got downloaded as AIFFs... Other problem is how to pick now those with proper dates and improper dates... Updating whole library is in this case only a problem in my eyes. With the current meaning of "DATE_ADDED" in my foobar config I need to add those dates manually. Anyway I still think that in most cases creation date would be very useful variable in many situations and for many users. I keep in mind Case's words but I also hope that it can be overcome and such variable will become available one day. I don't plan another moving between HDDs as now I have a lot of spare space for music. So now those creation dates will be quite proper and could be useful.